FAQ - ASSESSMENT AT CIS
Assessment is the evidence of a student’s learning. It is the materials and procedures used to collect evidence of progress toward desired learning outcomes. It is how we will know that students are learning the curriculum. In a balanced assessment system, both summative and formative assessments are an integral part of information gathering. Depend too much on one or the other and the reality of student achievement in your classroom becomes unclear.
From SY0910, CIS have adopted Assessment Beliefs and Practises (p48 of the SP Handbook). We believe it is important that we change what we do with assessment to reflect what is best practise in education. We also believe that we need to move towards an assessment system that is similar to that of other international schools.
What is the difference between FORMATIVE and SUMMATIVE assessment?
(http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/WebExclusive/Assessment/tabid/1120/Default.aspx)
SUMMATIVE: The key is to think of summative assessment as a means to gauge, at a particular point in time, student learning relative to content standards. Although the information that is gleaned from this type of assessment is important, it can only help in evaluating certain aspects of the learning process. Because they are spread out and occur after instruction every few weeks, months, or once a year, summative assessments are tools to help evaluate the effectiveness of programs, school improvement goals, alignment of curriculum, or student placement in specific programs. Summative assessments happen too far down the learning path to provide information at the classroom level and to make instructional adjustments and interventions during the learning process. It takes formative assessment to accomplish this.
FORMATIVE: Formative Assessment is part of the instructional process. When incorporated into classroom practice, it provides the information needed to adjust teaching and learning while they are happening.
I still do not understand, what is the distinction and can you give me an example?
One distinction is to think of formative assessment as "practice." We do not hold students accountable in "grade book fashion" for skills and concepts they have just been introduced to or are learning. We must allow for practice.
EXAMPLE; A good analogy for this is the road test that is required to receive a driver's license. What if, before getting your driver's license, you received a grade every time you sat behind the wheel to practice driving? What if your final grade for the driving test was the average of all of the grades you received while practicing? Because of the initial low grades you received during the process of learning to drive, your final grade would not accurately reflect your ability to drive a car. Your final driving test, or summative assessment, would be the measure that establishes whether or not you have the driving skills necessary for a driver's license.
The same holds true for classroom instruction, learning, and assessment. For example, in Economics, if your academic goal is to learn how to construct a demand and supply diagram from data given. As a student, when you are learning how to do this, you need to memorise the layout of the graph and understand why the Demand and supply curves slope in different ways, to read the figures and to be able to graph them in the correct format. You need to practise constructing this graph several times as practise, before the teacher gives you a summative task to determine whether you can do this or not. The practices are the formative assessment and the summative assessment is a task that the teacher designs so that they can inform the student if they have reached the academic goal, or not.
Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students. There are numerous strategies teachers can implement to engage students. In fact, research shows that the involvement in and ownership of their work increases students' motivation to learn. This does not mean the absence of teacher involvement. To the contrary, teachers are critical in identifying learning goals, setting clear criteria for success, and designing assessment tasks that provide evidence of student learning.
What are some of the instructional strategies that can be used formatively?
Some of the instructional strategies that can be used formatively include the following:
· Criteria and goal setting with students engages them in instruction and the learning process by creating clear expectations. In order to be successful, students need to understand and know the learning target/goal and the criteria for reaching it. Using student work, classroom tests, or exemplars of what is expected helps students understand where they are, where they need to be, and an effective process for getting there. Our teachers are building up a bank of exemplars in the next few years.
· Observations go beyond walking around the room to see if students are on task or need clarification. Observations assist teachers in gathering evidence of student learning to inform instructional planning. This evidence can be recorded and used as feedback for students about their learning or as anecdotal data shared with them during conferences.
· Questioning strategies should be embedded in lesson/unit planning. Asking better questions allows an opportunity for deeper thinking and provides teachers with significant insight into the degree and depth of understanding. Questions of this nature engage students in classroom dialogue that both uncovers and expands learning. Helping students ask better questions is another aspect of this formative assessment strategy.
· Self and peer assessment helps to create a learning community within a classroom. Students who can reflect while engaged in metacognitive thinking are involved in their learning. When students have been involved in criteria and goal setting, self-evaluation is a logical step in the learning process. With peer evaluation, students see each other as resources for understanding and checking for quality work against previously established criteria.
· Student record keeping helps students better understand their own learning as evidenced by their classroom work. This process of students keeping ongoing records of their work not only engages students, it also helps them, beyond a "grade," to see where they started and the progress they are making toward the learning goal.
All of these strategies are integral to the formative assessment process, and they have been suggested by models of effective middle school instruction.
Why does average based grading misrepresent student progress?
When averaging the quarter grade, a teacher essentially assigns points to everything the student completes in class during the quarter which includes things like homework, participation, tests, warm-up activities, etc. The problem is that many of the factors that go into the average do not necessarily tell the student, the parent, or the teacher what the child can and cannot do. For example, if the goal is for the student to understand, solve, and apply quadratic equations, an average based grade may misrepresent the student’s ability to reach the goal. In a unit on quadratic equations, the student may do all of his homework and warm-ups, participate in class a lot by raising his hand but fail the test on quadratic equations at the end of the unit. If the teacher simply averages all of the factors together the student may actually pass the quadratic equations unit without demonstrating that he can solve a quadratic equation.
The “non-achievement” factors like participation and homework, have skewed the average upwards so that the student passes even though he has shown he is still struggling with the goals of the course. This gives a false impression to the student and his family that he is doing okay in math when he is not.
How will I know if my child/ren is struggling before the summative test? I don’t want to get to the end of a unit/topic and find out that my son/daughter has been struggling and I had no idea about it?
Education is a partnership between the parents, student and the school. For a partnership to work well, it requires effective communication. Effective communication is two-way, and involves all parties being involved in the process. The school will undertake to upload grades on Edline (Elementary and MHS), send assessments tasks home (Elementary only) and communicate via email/student diary or phone call (Elementary and MHS).
The MHS student should write in his student diary all of his assessment grades, and should be able to discuss with his parents/guardian how and why he received the grade. The MHS student should be able to tell his/her parents/guardian about the different types of assessment tasks we have at CIS, and they should be able to explain a rubric!
We need the parents to check their child’s diary or communication folder at least twice a week (daily is preferred), go to the school website and read about the standards and benchmarks in each subject, go to Edline, phone/email the subject teacher with their concern/question or query. We also need parents to attend the Parent Teacher Conferences we have regularly scheduled, as well as the Coffee mornings and other information channels (Back to School Night, Information Evenings) and other school meetings.
If we all could do this, we would know how our child is progressing in school.
Other Information that is Useful
The Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) will not only tell you about how your child is in comparison to other students in US schools*, but by early Semester 2, you will know whether your child is making academic progress, or not. See the MAP FAQ for more information.
*In two years time we will have MAP data from other international schools and how our students compare with students in other international schools. This will be better comparison data for our students.
30 September 2009